


You Shouldn’t Have Come

by ernyx



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Character Death, EVERYTHING HURTS AND NOTHING IS OKAY, F/M, Gun Violence, Love Gets You Killed, Natasha and Matt love each other very much, Not A Happy Ending, but they're awful at showing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 04:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12763626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ernyx/pseuds/ernyx
Summary: Of course it’s a trap.Matt probably knew.(You shouldn’t have come.)But some people are worth dying for.





	You Shouldn’t Have Come

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted from my tumblr : http://artificiallyimplantedmemories.tumblr.com/post/167645331186  
> I told altarbov to send in the meme for having my muse die in his arms, and subsequently got Very Carried Away

     Natasha Romanoff is a careful woman. She has been this way since she was about five years old and learned that the outside world was harsh and cold, and that Ivan would worry if she spent too long out of his watchful gaze. Then, in the Red Room, she learned that being careful was the way to survive– that one had to blend into the scenery, be dangerous and graceful and unnoticed until the very last moment before you slit someone’s throat so that someone didn’t slit _yours_  first.

     Natasha Romanoff has been careful with a lot of things, but one piece of herself that she’d left unguarded during her Department X days was her heart. Granted, that was because she thought she didn’t have one, but she ended up in love with a beautiful metal-armed man, and all it brought them was pain. He was stripped from her, put into cryo, she was married off, only to have her husband supposedly die. After that, she’d put walls around that heart of hers a mile high.

     Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Natasha and Matthew Murdock, both with eighty thousand hangups, were not in the habit of saying _I love you_ to each other. They played a sort of strange game where they could neither be quite together nor entirely apart, like spinning magnets that couldn’t settle long enough to stick. Sometimes Natasha’s work kept her far away. Sometimes it kept her incredibly busy.

                      Those times were easier. She didn’t worry as much.

     But when she was home and not actively working, she fell back into her routine with Matt, out on rooftops at night, being vigilantes together. She went with him every chance she could, nowadays, to keep him from getting too injured by himself, but it wasn’t always successful. Still, at least she knew that either she was there to patch him up too, or she had a good friend in an also tired-of-his-shit Claire Temple.

     They say that love makes you do crazy things, but that’s only because someone becomes more of a priority for you than everything else. Natasha’s been careful not to let this happen, because if she tried to take responsibility for the life that Matt led, it would drive her insane. It’s bad enough that she has to yell at him every time he gets hurt, she’s not going to try to shoulder the unreasonable blame he puts on himself too.

                          But she knows how to use it to figure out where he’ll be next.

     He hasn’t told her, this night, where he’s going. Oddly reticent, even for him, Natasha has been suspicious from the get go that he might be in over his head, so nightfall finds her plotting out his recent interactions with various people, friends and foes, to figure out who he might be trying to take down next. With a destination in mind, she grabs her motorcycle and heads in his direction.

     She ends up in a part of town where the streetlights are perennially out, where she’s forced to turn on the night vision on her visor to spot Matt atop a crumbling apartment building. He’s facing in her direction, unsurprisingly, so she heads up to meet him.

     “You shouldn’t have come.”  
     “And yet here I am.”

     They both know what’s going down tonight, and they know that there are likely to be firearms involved, which makes Natasha grateful for Matt’s improved suit, but neither of them are invulnerable. Just as they’re about to leap out into the fray, a high pitched siren wails. Matt collapses to his knees, and they’re surrounded by armed guards.

                            Of _course_  it’s a trap.  
                                   Matt probably knew.  
                                               ( _You shouldn’t have come._ )

     Natasha fires on several of them, grabbing Matt and jumping off the building. Her grappling hook latches onto the next one, and they swing away from the captor, but not before both of them take some damage. The spy drops Matt into a secluded corner, hoping the sound will be muffled enough there for him to regain his bearings while she heads out again, aiming to take down the siren, and whoever is trying to kill Matt Murdock this time.

     It takes the better part of ten minutes to finally disable the noisemaker, during which time she also manages to kill about fifteen more of these nondescript guards. She doesn’t know who they work for, and it bothers her that she doesn’t know where Matt is and whether he’s okay, so she races back towards him, ignoring the fact that she’s bleeding from multiple places. 

                                _It’s no worse than what he suffers_ , she reminds herself.  


     It turns out that he’s safe, and just getting to his feet, and she nearly crumbles to her knees in front of him in relief. Just as she’s about to speak, a guard drops into their room through the ceiling. Instantly, Nat fires at their assailant, but he’s got a bulletproof jacket and a machine gun, and the bullets rip through her uniform and torso in moments, and she stumbles backwards. Almost in slow motion, she watches Matt grab her gun, and shoot the man in the head.

     From where she’s laying on the floor, she can see Matt’s hands shaking. She can see how he drops the gun like he’s been burned, and rushes to her side. There’s nowhere to apply pressure– there’s not enough of anything left there to hold the blood inside of her, so it drains out onto the floor in slick, dark puddles.

     He’s holding her, she realizes, though her body is far enough in shock that she barely feels it. Still, she’s definitely warm, and despite the pain, it’s oddly comfortable. She’s spent some time wondering if it was even possible for her to die, though she wasn’t ever going to try to find out on purpose. Knowing that she is mortal is… satisfying.

     But right now, there’s a man she loves who is crying over her, and her heart breaks a little bit. “Hush, Matty, hush,” she whispers, reaching up to touch his cheek with bloody fingers. “I chose this knowing what could happen. You told me to stay away.” _Don’t blame yourself, even though I know you will._ “Let me have this, Matt.” _Don’t take responsibility for my actions. This one is on me._ “I love you, and always will. I’d die for you a thousand times if I could. Please be safe.”

                                _You’re more important than me, my love.  
                                               You are always worth the sacrifice._

**Author's Note:**

> Comments? Feedback? I'd love to hear it! Drop me a line either here or on my tumblr!


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